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I watched Tony Takitani today. It’s based on a short story by my favorite Japanese author (Murakami) …then again, I really only know two Japanese authors. Anyway, he’s a good one. Here’s the synopsis:

Tony Takitani had a solitary childhood. Being alone was normal since his mother died young and his father was always away with his jazz band. At school he studied art, but while his sketches are accurate and detailed they lack feeling. Used to being self-sufficient, Tony seems to find emotions illogical and immature.

After finding his true vocation as a technical illustrator, he becomes fascinated by Eiko, a client who in turn is fascinated by high end fashion. Eventually he marries her, and his life changes. He feels vibrantly alive and for the first time he understands and fears loneliness. But her obsession with designer clothes begins to worry him. When he asks her to economize, the consequences are tragic.

It is quite a good movie; subtle, symbolic, powerful. Very much a minimalist masterpiece of love and longing and loneliness and isolation.

Jamie would not like this movie because the visuals are so austere; very flat colors with lots of stark contrasts (almost black and white movie level), but with spots of color at interesting or crucial points (interesting points in the frame, rather than in the story). Like the expression of an emotion that you just can’t keep contained. Did I mention the movie was subtle? Because it is.

In other words, the movie is very Japanese.

Murakami, who is as popular in Japan as, say, Stephen King is here, writes these strangely compelling stories, filled with supremely flawed characters who exist in a sort of narcissistic existentialism world. Some of his overriding themes are loss, solitude, despair… and love. For example, in A Wild Sheep Chase, the divorced, chain-smoking loner protagonist falls for a woman who has ears so enticing that she can never show them in public lest they cause a disturbance. And yet these characters function, in society and in the story, organically. And you, the reader, understand and love these characters by understanding their quirks. Understand and love them without explicitly saying so, because with understanding comes love, and your attention and interest in them is an expression of that love. No garment rending or grandiloquence required.

Like I said, very Japanese.

The pallette chosen by the director for the movie was deliberately muted in order to better reflect Murakami’s literary world. Much in the same way you would want a Luhrman adapting Allende‘s House of Spirits instead of an Aronofsky, I think the director was perfectly suited to the Murakami material.

There’s a gallimaufry of art house Art in the movie as well, which can float your boat or not, depending on your tastes. For me, it’s like a relaxing, thoughtful zen interlude amidst all the strife and turmoil of life. An expression and reflection of outward calm amidst crushing isolation and loneliness; an imposition of discipline to reign in some of the wild, potentially explosive emotions in life. The restrained formalism is also a nice counterbalance to the so-real-you-can-smell-the-horse-shit reality created in a series like Deadwood and without the overwhelming opulence and beauty of a Wang Kar Wai flick like 2046 or In the Mood for Love (the heartbreak remains).

From Murakami’s narrator, talking about the protagonist:

And even the emotions he had once embraced gradually receded from his memory.

His memory gradually shifted, like mist in the wind, growing dimmer with each change.

There’s more to it than that, of course. There’s some truly whack psychosexual overtones for the second half of the film (not to worry, it doesn’t take a turn to Audition land). Good score to the movie as well, also done in a minimalist, spare fashion (solo piano throughout, unless I missed some parts).

As for the actors, Rie Miyazawa, the lead actress (there are only four credited thespians in the movie) first became known to me from Twilight Samurai, where she was as striking as she is here. Turns out, she’s had quite the turbulent life (apparently,I’m not alone in constantly thinking “someone give this girl a sammich” whenever she’s on screen). I could find less about Issei Ogata, the actor who plays Tony.

Definitely very Japanese.

Holy shit

Fields of wheat, durum and barley in the Dakotas this dry summer will never end up as pasta, bread or beer. What is left of the stifled crops has been salvaged to feed livestock struggling on pastures where hot winds blow clouds of dirt from dried-out ponds.

Some ranchers have been forced to sell their entire herds, and others are either moving their cattle to greener pastures or buying more already-costly feed. Hundreds of acres of grasslands have been blackened by fires sparked by lightning or farm equipment.

Many of the potential worldwide cataclysmic disasters are frightening to me in an abstract sort of way. Earthquakes, for example; you know it could happen and it would be horrible, but it doesn’t really feel dangerous in the present moment. You’ll deal with it when it happens. Global warming? I can handle floods and massive dislocations, famine, and anarchy. Intellectually, anyway.

But drought? Drought scares the shit out of me. Don’t know why really, but it’s the one weather pattern that makes me get reaaallly nervous (and I know droughts will be more common with increased global warming (as will flooding and torrential downpours and increased variability and severity overall)). Maybe it’s because I always assume there’s a way to desalinate ocean water to make it potable and, thus, we live… while it’s rather hard to make water out of thin air. *shrug*

So, anyway, … drought! Ayeeee!!!1!11!1

Then again, maybe it’s just more media scaremongering.

Amazing how a little conflagration in Israel has apparently rendered the media’s collective memory void when it comes to that other interesting place where… shoot, what’s it’s name? You know, that one place … sand… oil… *snaps fingers* uhm… you know, wassname? Can’t quite remember what it’s called, but anyway, it’s so yesterday! Oooh, look, butterfly!

Las Vegas Makes It Illegal to Feed Homeless in Parks

Las Vegas, whose homeless population has doubled in the past decade to about 12,000 people in and around the city, joins several other cities across the country that have adopted or considered ordinances limiting the distribution of charitable meals in parks. Most have restricted the time and place of such handouts, hoping to discourage homeless people from congregating and, in the view of officials, ruining efforts to beautify downtowns and neighborhoods.

But the Las Vegas ordinance is believed to be the first to explicitly make it an offense to feed “the indigent.”

Wouldn’t want to have any of those unsightly people interfering with the beauty of our fake non-desert landscape architecture in the desert now, would we? Because when you start feeding the homeless in the park, then they all flock there, leading to domestication, rampant shitting on the lawns, and algae blooms in the water. They must be stopped!

Here’s crazy, bigoted drunk as shit Mel Gibson:

TMZ has four pages of the original report prepared by the arresting officer in the case, L.A. County Sheriff’s Deputy James Mee. According to the report, Gibson became agitated after he was stopped on Pacific Coast Highway and told he was to be detained for drunk driving Friday morning in Malibu. The actor began swearing uncontrollably. Gibson repeatedly said, “My life is f****d.” Law enforcement sources say the deputy, worried that Gibson might become violent, told the actor that he was supposed to cuff him but would not, as long as Gibson cooperated. As the two stood next to the hood of the patrol car, the deputy asked Gibson to get inside. Deputy Mee then walked over to the passenger door and opened it. The report says Gibson then said, “I’m not going to get in your car,” and bolted to his car. The deputy quickly subdued Gibson, cuffed him and put him inside the patrol car.

Once inside the car, a source directly connected with the case says Gibson began banging himself against the seat. The report says Gibson told the deputy, “You mother f****r. I’m going to f*** you.” The report also says “Gibson almost continually [sic] threatened me saying he ‘owns Malibu’ and will spend all of his money to ‘get even’ with me.”

The report says Gibson then launched into a barrage of anti-Semitic statements: “F*****g Jews… The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world.” Gibson then asked the deputy, “Are you a Jew?”

The deputy became alarmed as Gibson’s tirade escalated, and called ahead for a sergeant to meet them when they arrived at the station. When they arrived, a sergeant began videotaping Gibson, who noticed the camera and then said, “What the f*** do you think you’re doing?”

I do believe we’ve entered the second stage of starlet meltdown when untalented celebrities are chastised for their lack of “professionalism” as their partying catches up to them.

Look, the only time they bring “professionalism” into the mix is when the suits finally realize the diva has no drawing power. Lohan brings nothing to the box office table and is far closer at this stage to a Hilton than a Johansson. If she doesn’t right her ship soon, she’s going to find herself at her true talent level … releasing an “accidental” porn video, followed in five years by working the graveyard shift at a shitty diner in the middle of nowhere blowing truckers for spare change during her breaks.

FSM, I love this guy:

Suit against AT&T for wiretapping dismissed (not the EFF one which survived the motion to dismiss, the ACLU one)

Citing national security, a federal judge Tuesday threw out a lawsuit aimed at blocking AT&T Inc. from giving telephone records to the government for use in the war on terror.

“The court is persuaded that requiring AT&T to confirm or deny whether it has disclosed large quantities of telephone records to the federal government could give adversaries of this country valuable insight into the government’s intelligence activities,” U.S. District Judge Matthew F. Kennelly said.

Excuse me? That’s the most moronic reasoning I’ve heard since Jeff Jacoby’s latest straw man fallacy. OK, that was only yesterday, but this reasoning is specious nonetheless.

It would harm national security to confirm or deny that private corporations are sharing their data with the government? Are you kidding me? Ignoring for the moment that of course they are, what possible insight could be gained that is not already publicly known or suspected?

Here’s a tip: the terrorists? Aren’t using public switched networks. Or if they are, they’re on untraceable prepaid cellular and VOIP lines. This AT&T wiretap is about spying on we average persons, and is both futile and ineffective.

is that they’re always going to fill them.

You could be on a secret government database or watch list for simply taking a picture on an airplane. Some federal air marshals say they’re reporting your actions to meet a quota, even though some top officials deny it.

The air marshals, whose identities are being concealed, told 7NEWS that they’re required to submit at least one report a month. If they don’t, there’s no raise, no bonus, no awards and no special assignments.

…

“That could have serious impact … They could be placed on a watch list. They could wind up on databases that identify them as potential terrorists or a threat to an aircraft. It could be very serious,” said Don Strange, a former agent in charge of air marshals in Atlanta. He lost his job attempting to change policies inside the agency.

That’s why several air marshals object to a July 2004 memo from top management in the Las Vegas office, a memo that reminded air marshals of the SDR requirement.

The body of the memo said, “Each federal air marshal is now expected to generate at least one SDR per month.”

There are tensions in any system such as this. One where you want to ensure that your goals for effectiveness or efficiency are being met while at the same time measuring employee performance. In this case, I’m sure there are political considerations, such as flagging X number of terrrrrists for the head honcho’s yearly review.

Given that you-the-organization want to have a safe flight, you want to reward your best workers, and you want to incentivize them to try hard, I would posit that creating a monthly floor for reported suspicious activities is an amazingly wrongheaded way to go about it… unless you are solely measuring the “number of suspected terrorists identified.” I think if you measure something else, like, say, air miles flown without incident or actual attempts thwarted, then your procedures for rewarding those goals would be much more rational.

Now take me off the damn no-fly list, bitches.

Update: it appears that the story was based on old information

S-H-Y-A-M-A-L-A-N

Writer-director M. Night Shyamalan made his smallest splash since his Sixth Sense breakthrough with Lady in the Water, his first major feature apart from Disney. Shyamalan’s self-described “bedtime story” drew $18 million at 3,235 venues, compared to the $50.7 million debut of his last picture, The Village. According to distributor Warner Bros.’ research, 56 percent of the audience was female and 64 percent was under 25 years old, while the verdict from moviegoer pollster CinemaScore was a discouraging “B-.”

Funny, that’s also how you spell “hack.” I should have included him in the Ratner v. Jackson discussion too.

Looks like that decision to direct “Lady in the Water” over the award-winning, popular, yet plagiarized, Life of Pi wasn’t the wisest movie ever, eh?

Intel’s new chip name: Merom

Remember Yonah? It’s the code name for the Intel Core Duo chip found in the iMac, MacBook, MacBook Pro and Mac mini, and it will soon play second fiddle to a faster cool chip arriving from Intel: Merom.

Merom is “a mobility-optimized, dual-core processor based on the new, state of the art, Intel Core microarchitecture” according to the company.

There’s also the Nissan Murano to consider. Since the people naming these things apparently didn’t consider those names fully, I think we should take some time here to do so. For example, here are some other upcoming goodies (cars division):

Oldsmobile Tuckfard
Kia Chinqia
Honda Cansher (Hybrid)
Ford Explosivo

Feel free to add more in comments

Bow before Google, bitches

Google Inc. said on Tuesday that the company has begun offering mobile phone users in more than 30 major U.S. cities the capacity to view highway maps with “live” traffic data.

Actually, I think Google’s been flailing for a few months now, but I thought this was a nifty idea. Except for the part where every cell phone provider charges you more for web browsing so why do it? My bus schedule is updated like that too, and it’s a great service… or would be if I accessed the internet from my freakin phone.

Where was I going with this? Oh yes, Google expanding, flailing, hitting the curse of large sizes and the laws of inertia. I fully expect them to buy YouTube shortly (who uses Google video, I mean really?). Come to think of it, I think that’s YouTube’s only path to profitability. Man, it’s like 1998 all over again.

President Bush’s penchant for writing exceptions to laws he has just signed violates the Constitution, an American Bar Association task force says in a report highly critical of the practice.

 ”Bush has had more than 800 signing statement challenges, compared with about 600 signing statements COMBINED for all other presidents, the group said.”

With his cede to the Executive everything it wants bill. Not only his bill, but he’s also writing op-ed’s in support of his own authoritarian giveaway bonanza:

Sen. Arlen Specter has an Op-Ed in this morning’s Washington Post which attempts to justify his proposed FISA legislation — legislation which, at its core, renders legal the President’s lawbreaking and cedes to the President the right to eavesdrop on Americans with no judicial oversight. The bill would also all but kill pending litigation challenging the legality of the President’s eavesdropping conduct, and endorse a theory of presidential power so extreme that even the President’s own Attorney General rejects it. Despite all of this, Specter claims, apparently with a straight face, that “negotiations with administration officials and the president himself were fierce” and that the bill is “a preeminently fair compromise.”

Call your Senator if you can. Make your voice heard. The FDL link (first one, above) has all the phone numbers and such.

… wingnut neonconservatives

This news won’t make Joe Lieberman’s foes any happier with their nemesis. It turns out that Lieberman got a $500 contribution from Bill Kristol, the Iraq-war-supporting neoconservative editor of the Weekly Standard.

It appears to be Kristol’s first donation of over $200 since 1998, and all his other contributions have been to Republicans. Also interesting: Over 80 percent of Lieberman’s donations in May and June came from out of state.

How does one know one is no longer a Democrat? When Bill Kristol is donating to your campaign.